Facebook is today launching a brand-new digital assistant for its Messenger app called 'M'.

The social media giant is late to the virtual assistant party: Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple have all introduced their own in recent years.

Regardless, Facebook hopes that its new addition to Messenger will "enrich the way people communicate and get things done".

M is designed to provide easy, helpful links to relevant content in conversations by providing prompts to send stickers, pay or request money, share a location, make plans, start a poll, or get a ride. The AI powering M recognises intent in a conversation and then makes a suggestion.

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M started with "a small AI experiment powered by humans that could fulfil almost any request", but is now a fully automated system.

The digital assistant has been tested with sets of users in the US, and will be rolled out to all iOS and Android users across America today (April 7).

It sounds like clever stuff: the more you use M, the more it learns how to help.